"You know how people sometimes say that jazz is the only truly American art form? Animated GIFs are like the jazz of the internet: they could only exist, and be created and appreciated, online. That said, PopTart Cat is not exactly on par with Thelonious Monk. But photographer Jamie Beck and motion graphics artist Kevin Burg may have finally found a way to elevate the animated GIF to a level approaching fine art, with their 'cinemagraphs' –– elegant, subtly animated creations that are 'something more than a photo but less than a video.' ...

The pair was inspired to create these cinemagraphs while preparing to cover Fashion Week this past February: 'We wanted to tell more of a story than a single still frame photograph but didn't want the high maintenance aspect of a video,' they told Co.Design via email."

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The Futurist principle of 'divisionism' "revealing the 'force lines' of movement, was also employed in Futurist photography (known as 'chronophotography' or – photographic dynamism'), most notably by the Italian brothers Anton Giulio and Arturo Bragaglia. For numerous startling photographs, they exposed the negative for a number of seconds to capture in sharp focus the still start and end positions of a complete human movement, but to blur the motion in–between. The temporal movement is thus captured and tracked across the space of the photograph, and human faces and bodies appear to liquify, like ghostly phantoms."